Thomas and

the Trapdoor

Thomas was always doing silly things in the classroom for a laugh. He only behaved
when Miss Battleaxe was around. We all behaved when Miss Battleaxe was around.
She was very large and very strict, and had the kind of voice that could stop the
traffic. She had no time for people who fooled around in her class. In the middle of
her classroom floor was a large trapdoor which could be lifted with with a small brass
ring. We had never seen what lay below the trapdoor but guessed that there might be
a small storage room for spare desks or chairs.

On one particular day, we came back from play to find Thomas pushing away the
desk above the trapdoor and lifting it up. When it was raised, we all peered into the
darkness but saw nothing more than a large square hole, at the bottom of which lay a
pile of old books. Before we could stop him, Thomas had climbed down into the
hole and sat at the bottom grinning up at us. The next thing I knew was that a couple
of boys had shut the trapdoor and replaced the desk above it.

‘Let me out!’ yelled Thomas but we all stood there laughing.

‘Quiet!’ shouted Miss Battleaxe who had appeared from nowhere and we all scuttled
back to our desks, except, of course, for Thomas. Miss Battleaxe often appeared
suddenly as if she could walk through walls. She said it was a gift.

‘Good Morning, children,’ boomed Miss Battleaxe.

‘Good Morning, Miss,’ we replied.

‘Today,’ she continued, ‘We are going to learn about the Romans and how they
changed the lives of so many........’. At this point, Miss Battleaxe paused and asked,
‘Where’s Thomas?’

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We all looked at his empty desk and waited for a small voice to cry ‘I’m down here’,
but there was only silence. Fred Frisbee then suggested that he may have been
unwell and had gone home. Winnie Wickers thought that he might have had to run an
errand for the head teacher. No one suggested that Miss Battleaxe might be standing
one metre above his head.

‘Well,’ said Miss Battleaxe, ‘We’ll have to continue the lesson without him and you
all better pay attention because next week we shall have a test to see how much you
remember.’

We all groaned, but not too loudly as Miss Battleaxe did not like to hear children
groan or moan in her class. Outside, the sun was shining and the playing fields in the
distance looked so inviting, but inside the classroom we had to sit quietly, listening
and learning all about the Romans. She probably told us lots of interesting facts
about how they got here, when and where they landed, what they wore and what they
ate. Unfortunately, most of it went in one ear and straight out of the
other because all we could think about was Thomas sitting there in the
dark under the trapdoor. Then Omar O’Shea and Petal Patel started to
giggle, but we all looked at them fiercely and shook our heads just like
Miss Battleaxe would have done. This was no time to start giggling.

Suddenly, as Miss Battleaxe was describing the construction of Roman roads, the
sound of a book falling came from under the floor boards. Almost immediately,
Jasmine Juxtapose pushed a book off her desk. ‘Sorry Miss,’ she said as she picked it
up and received a cold stare from Miss Battleaxe, the one she used to stun wasps.

A little later, as Miss Battleaxe was showing us a picture of a Roman centurion and
explaining how he tied his toga, there came a loud sneeze from the underworld.
Within a second or two, several pupils were all sneezing together and disturbing Miss
Battleaxe’s presentation.

‘Dear me!’ she exclaimed, ‘I hope there isn’t a nasty bug going round. We don’t want
anyone to miss next week’s test, do we?’ but no one spoke.

Towards the end of the lesson, some of us thought we heard the sound of snoring
coming from the trapdoor. Well, none of us was going to pretend to be asleep in Miss
Battleaxe’s class, but she didn’t seem to notice and kept droning on about those
Romans. Finally, the lesson was over. Miss Battleaxe swept out of the classroom and,
when the coast was clear, we released Thomas from his dungeon. He was covered in
dust but didn’t seem too unhappy at having spent the whole lesson there.
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 Greta Grunge, who didn’t like Thomas very much, said ‘We’re going to
have a test next week and you won’t know any of the answers.’ She then
flounced out of the classroom followed by some of her tongue-poking
friends.

‘I’m not worried about that,’ said Thomas, ‘I just need to have a good excuse ready
for not being here. I suppose I could say that I got locked in a storeroom by
accident.’

‘Or in the toilet,’ suggested Basil Burlap who usually had lots of good ideas, but not
on this occasion.

*******************

Well, a week passed and we found ourselves back with Miss Battleaxe again, but this
time we all stayed above ground. and the trapdoor remained firmly closed.

‘Now let’s see how much you remember about my talk on the Romans. Get out your
workbooks and write the answers to my questions. You will write in your best
handwriting and there will be no talking.’

We knew better than to break Miss Battleaxe’s rules. If anyone did, she would rap
them across the knuckles with the edge of a steel ruler. So hard that it ruined the
careers of some promising violin players. The test began and I still remember some of
the questions, though I didn’t have much luck with the answers. I still wouldn’t.

When did the Romans land in Britain?

How many ships did they bring?
Where did they come ashore?
What kind of food did they find here?
What is special about Roman roads?
and so on.

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After the test, Miss Battleaxe sat at her desk marking our workbooks while we had to
do something she called silent reading. At last, the marking was over and she
announced the results in reverse order. Even though Thomas had missed the lesson,
his was not the first name she called out. That honour went to Danny Dingbat, the
class dunce. Danny had managed to score half a point for spelling Roman correctly,
but lost it for writing ‘ther rodes did not hav spede camras’.

There was some excitement when Crystal Balls outpointed Greta Grunge, who
usually came top in classroom tests. In fact, we had just started to applaud Lily
Lasagne’s fine performance in which she made only one mistake when Miss
Battleaxe told us to simmer down.

‘Save your applause for the class champion. For the only pupil who made no
mistakes in our test. For the one to whom I shall award this Easter egg. Today,
children, our winner is Thomas.’

She went on to say that, although Thomas had missed the lesson, he had gone to the
trouble to find out as much as he could about the Romans in time for the test. In
addition to the Easter egg, she also awarded him the ‘Student of the Week’ gold star
on the large chart which she kept to encourage us. When she handed him the egg, she
called him the ‘Victor Ludorum’ which had old Thomas, and a few more of us, quite
confused until she explained it was Latin for the winner of the competition.

Later, in the cloakroom, I asked Victor, I mean Thomas, how he did it. ‘It was easy,’
he replied. ‘Stuck under the trapdoor, I had nothing else to do but listen to old
Battleaxe rattling on about the Romans. There was nothing down there to distract me.
I couldn’t flick pieces of paper at Greta Grunge or poke my tongue out at her friends.
I couldn’t swop silly notes with Fred Frisbee, wink at Lily Lasagne or stare out of the
window. I was just trapped in the darkness and remembered every word she said. In
fact, I don’t think I will ever forget them. Now where did I hang my toga?’

*****************